No Matter How You Feel About People, You Still Have to Deal With Them

Sermon outline

God's promises of blessing and provision are fulfilled through a covenant relationship of consistent, faithful obedience, including faithful giving to the house of the Lord, even when it does not seem to be working.

1. Covenant comes before the promise

   The key to financial breakthrough and God's blessing is faithfulness in a covenant relationship with the Father and with Jesus. God is governed by His Word, not His emotions, and never changes, so our walk must be based on the Word and obedience, not our own idea of who He is. Living halfheartedly after the desires of the flesh is not sustainable; God may allow it for a season, but it will end.

   “You will be unable to take hold of God's promises in faith unless you live a strong covenant relationship with Jesus.”

   • Matthew 4:4
   • James 1:17

2. If you abide in Me

   Too many Christians think the blessing is about 'I want, I need'. Jesus attached a condition: if you abide in Me and My words abide in you, you shall ask what you will. The prerequisite is obedience, continual fellowship and a mind renewed daily. Israel's prosperity, blessing and abundance were likewise conditional on keeping their covenant, and Jesus came to fulfil the law, not to destroy it.

   “The prerequisite is that we have to be obedient, we have to be in covenant, we have to be doing the Bible constantly.”

   • John 15:7
   • Matthew 5:17

3. Wherever you set your foot

   Moses told Israel there would be no poor among them, and God promised to multiply them and drive out the nations that told them they did not belong. Wherever God lets you walk, a house you could not afford by the world's standard or the directors' floor at work, He has already given you authority there, because His words abide in you.

   Illustration: If you work on the second floor and are called up to the eighth floor where the directors sit, God has already set that promotion in place the moment you walk in.

   “There shall be no poor among us in Jesus name.”

   • Deuteronomy 15:4

4. Faithfulness in the mundane

   Consistency is the key: we keep fixing our eyes on Jesus, walking by faith, giving to the house of the Lord and paying our tithes even when it seems not to be working, because God is working. Jesus watched how people gave, and the widow's two mites were more than the rich man's gift because she gave out of love, not lack or fear. A tenth of R2,000 and a tenth of R20 million are the same faithfulness, and waiting for the big payday to start is where the enemy wants you.

   Illustration: His father used to say that the key to success is doing the mundane things consistently, day to day.

   “There's no difference between the 10% of 2000 rand and the 10% of 20 million. It's the same thing when you're faithful.”

   • Mark 12:41-44
   • Luke 16:10

5. Bring it to the place He chooses, with rejoicing

   Israel was not to give tithes and offerings wherever they liked but at the place God chose for His name, where He met them at the altar. It was meant to be a time of great rejoicing, not a solemn one. Tithing starts as an obligation, becomes love as you watch God's faithfulness with the tenth, and grows into a holy fear of not following His ordinances even in hard times.

   “In the beginning when we learning the principle of tithing, it seems like it's a point of obligation.”

   • Deuteronomy 12:5-7

6. Sow in the famine

   In a famine God told Isaac not to go down to Egypt but to sojourn in the land, and promised to be with him and bless him. Isaac sowed in the dry ground and reaped a hundredfold the same year. As covenant partners in the church we sojourn where God has placed us, and we are not limited by what is in our hand but unlimited by the God we serve.

   Illustration: Years ago, when his father taught on the thousandfold blessing, some fifty or sixty people covenanted to sow R1,000 a month over and above their tithes and offerings for about a year and a half, and he says not one of them was not blessed.

   “I'm not limited by what's in my hand, but I am unlimited by the God that I serve.”

   • Genesis 26:3
   • Genesis 26:12

In this message